Elevating IoT Sales: How to Master the Effectiveness and Efficiency Conversation

By Chris Whitaker, VP of Advanced Solutions, IoT and Wireless

In Part 1 of this series, we reviewed the value of having a broad business discussion with customers to identify how IoT can advance your business. When it comes to the complexities of emerging technology, you are not selling technology for technology’s sake. You are selling outcomes. Why would a business want to make a leap of faith into brand-new tech? Or even make a change from one supplier to another? Because the right solution can help today’s leaders address the outcomes critical to success in the digital era: cost-savings, increased productivity, and elevated customer experience.

To reach these key outcomes, a business must evaluate areas of its operations where it can increase effectiveness and efficiency (E&E). Here are four E&E “hot buttons” you can use to guide your customer conversations to uncover the areas of most potential impact:

Let’s apply the E&E approach to the amusement park customer from Blog #1:  

Issue: A Telarus partner’s amusement park client expressed concern over staffing issues. They assigned 12 staff members to manually check and empty trash cans throughout the park several times a day, taking valuable time away from other operational tasks. While some trash cans were overflowing, others were practically empty. And there was no consistent, predictable pattern to the usage.

Hot buttons: Waste & Cost; Manual Processes; Safety; QA & Tracking

Solution: Upon the partner’s recommendation, the customer installed a smart sensors solution for trash can quality control and asset tracking, which: a) sent text notifications to staff’s smart phones when any trash can was half full or full; b) ranked the trash locations in order of priority; and c) analyzed higher-traffic areas that needed more frequent cleaning.

Results: 

• Reduction in staff from 12 to 3 members – more efficient use of resources and budget 
• Increased productivity – better utilization of staff, reallocated to other tasks  
• Improved visitor experience – cleaner, more beautiful grounds 
• Increased safety – healthier, more sanitary environment with zero trash overflow
  

By having an E&E conversation, you’ll have the context you need to guide your customers toward the right solution, even if it’s a different one than they expected. And by understanding how a business uses or does not use technology, you can help them save time and get more done with less. The amusement park would have never considered an IoT solution for their staffing issues if the partner hadn’t walked them through the E&E hot buttons and helped them visualize desired outcomes via new technology. I encourage you to try this approach to identify new opportunities with your customers.

Once you have helped your customer understand where they can be more effective and efficient, Telarus’s expert engineering team, services and tools can help you recommend the right solution. From outsourcing mobility expenses and helpdesk to deploying sensors and AI video, our partners are saving businesses time and money by replacing manual processes with automated ones, freeing up staff to focus on more critical tasks. A proper solution in mobility and IoT sets the stage for increased E&E and staying ahead of the competition.

Next up in the “Why IoT?” series: How to help your customers leverage actionable data from new technology to boost outcomes; a win-win for everyone involved.  

To learn how Telarus IoT solutions can help accelerate your business, email Chris at cwhitaker@telarus.com